


Santiago and the Wolf

by biggestbaddestwolf



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/F, Femslash February, Paranormal, werewolf transformations probable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggestbaddestwolf/pseuds/biggestbaddestwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy Santiago is a member of a group of werewolf hunters, led by Ray Holt. When they move to a new city, tracking a deadly werewolf pack, Amy stumbles upon a personal life instead. But what happens when her new love interest, Rosa Diaz, isn't quite who Amy assumes she is? Written for Femslash February!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One night at a bar, Amy Santiago (werewolf hunter), meets Rosa Diaz. Instant sparks.

The volume in the bar was set to a dejected murmur, so Amy Santiago felt right at home. She slid onto a stool by the counter and gestured for a drink. The bartender knew her order by now; two weeks in the city, every other night spent at this same stool, with that same frustrated frown on her face- it made her easy to remember. That and the giant black duffel bag at her feet, stuffed to the brim. Although the bartender glanced at it occasionally, he was as likely to mention that bag as he was to ask her what she was drinking tonight. The bar had become her regular spot the moment it was clear that people there didn’t ask to many questions.

Amy could have left the bag in her car, but she was comforted by being able to tap it with her toe. She justified it once, to the team’s head Hunter, Holt, by animatedly explaining how she was always going to be ready. He’d simply pointed out that she could keep a weapon in a side bag. His point was valid, and she was left admitting to herself- but not to him- that the bag was as good as a security blanket at this stage. Filled with weapons fired and cleaned and tested, but never really used properly. She didn’t know when and if she’d need each one, and so instead of abandoning them to the car, where she could end up without her shotgun or silver-bulleted assault rifle or a blowtorch, she would have each of them at her fingertips at all times.

The second beer of the night arrived in front of her- tonight she wasn’t in much of a mood to be cheery and talkative with the bartender, and so it was as if beers arrived in front of her by magic instead of being placed there. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have spoken if prompted- it was more that she was worried about talking too much.

What’s got you looking like that tonight, was a question that she could only dance around, but knowing her she would ramble around it, dropping to many hints about the specific truths. Inevitably, she’d embarrass herself and have to excuse herself, and she wasn’t looking forward to that.

With a sigh, she drank her beer and scanned the room. She didn’t know any of the faces beyond the ‘I think they were there last night’ level of recognition. The first few nights she’d been at the bar she’d attempted to bring along familiar faces, but since she’d been on rotation with Scully and Hitchcock, they weren’t actually very pleasant company. Terrible drinking buddies, actually, who tended towards showing repulsive semi-healed scarring even before they’d had their first drink. She’d rather the seats next to her be empty, if that was her only option.

“Gimme the usual.”

Amy nearly jumped as someone sat down in one of the empty seats beside her. She hadn’t realized that the bar was full enough to make those seats actually appealing places to sit. She scooted her stool over so the newcomer wouldn’t feel like she was crowing them, and then finally took the opportunity to look up in their direction.

And then she immediately glanced away from the tall, curly haired occupant of the stool next to her. The tall, curly haired patron in a leather jacket and slim dark jeans and boots that looked as if they could kick through a wall and their wearer wouldn’t feel a thing.

“Not staring’s worse than staring.”

Amy felt her stomach drop and her heart skip, but now that was mostly embarrassment than anything else. “Um, excuse me?”

“If you’re gonna stare, do it,” the woman said, although for the first few words of her sentence she didn’t bother to look Amy’s way. When she finally did, Amy blinked a few times, just for the sheer intensity of the woman’s incredibly reserved expression. “Better than punking out about it.”

Amy narrowed her eyes as she thought about it from that perspective. “I guess.” The bartender brought over a bottle and a glass and put it in front of the woman. Amy cleared her throat and shook her head. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me, I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman answered, and Amy got the feeling that it wasn’t the first time that she’d had this conversation. “You smell better than most of the guys in this joint, I’m not complaining.” Whether it was the drink or the attention, Amy’s cheeks flushed warmly, and she stared down at her own bottle. The woman watched her for a second before gesturing at the bartender. “One more glass.”

“Oh, you don’t ha-” Amy started.

“I bought this to share, but the asshole I’m supposed to share it with is running so late I’ll have gray hair by the time he gets here. Go ahead.” The woman had a tendency to interrupt, but considering Amy was only going to ramble, Amy considered it a gift, preventing her from saying any of the things that she would inevitably say.

And it wasn’t as if anything else was happening for the rest of the night. Patrol was over, Hitchcock and Scully were fortunately far, far away, and it was nice having someone in the seat next to her. Amy smiled as she reached over and grabbed herself a glass, maybe a little too widely and trying a little too hard, but she meant it.

Rosa’s smile- they introduced themselves a little after the second glass-, on the other hand, was a little like a baring of teeth, but the delight in her eyes was as genuine as Amy’s giddiness. The smile did interesting things to Amy’s stomach, because she couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone who smiled like that before. She spent a few minutes running through the list of people she knew in her head, but none of them, not even Jeffords with a smile that could cow an entire army of the undead, smiled like Rosa did.

They moved from the bar to a table when another couple of patrons cleared out. Rosa slouched back in her seat lazily, like she might be tempted to fall asleep any minute, while Amy leaned in, her forearms on the table as she held her glass with both hands. Rosa’s smile made Amy smile. It was a little like a nod of approval from Holt during a patrol- it felt as if it took effort to win that smile, that Amy had won some competition that no one but she knew existed.

When they moved to the table, Rosa had reached down to take Amy’s duffel bag for her, but Amy was not so far gone that she didn’t quickly grab it herself. Now the bag sat by Amy’s feet again, like a cat curled against its owner.

Rosa glanced down at the bag again for the first time in what might have been ages (two hours, tops, Amy corrected herself, but it felt like ages). Her head still tilted down towards it, she glanced up at Amy. This many drinks in, that look, that seemingly expressionless but not blank look, made Amy feel warm. “So what’s in there? A body?” Her voice was flat, and so Amy stared, mouth gaping for a moment. “That was a joke.”

It didn’t sound like a joke, Amy thought, and the explanation that it was a joke didn’t sound any different from the joke itself, either. Fortunately Rosa replied fast enough that Amy’s brain didn’t automatically supply ‘You’re supposed to get rid of werewolf remains immediately- there is a window of post-mortem infectiousness and the parts of a werewolf could be used in too many dangerous magics.’ Even know, turning bright red and hyper aware that Rosa probably thought she was an absolute freak, Amy couldn’t help but mentally run through all the rituals she’d been educated on.

“I, uh, it’s…my work bag?”

“That a question?”

Amy drank some more and cleared her throat. “Work out bag,” she corrected herself. “For the gym.” Rosa clearly didn’t buy it, but she didn’t seem to care all that much. She glanced over her shoulder at the door; while she was turned away, Amy cursed under her breath and mouthed, ‘work bag,’ mortified. She coughed again. “Are you waiting for someone?” She asked. She winced at herself; she knew the answer already. “I mean, they haven’t called or sent you a text about being late or…?”

Rosa shrugged as she turned back. “He’ll be here whenever. He’s usually late.”

“He?” Amy tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice, but she’d never been very good at that. What she was good at was recovering with a little too much enthusiasm, as if she could bury it under the exuberance of her voice. “Well I’m sure he’s just busy or got tied up or-”

“Nah,” Rosa shook her head. “He probably just overslept.”

“Overslept?”

“He takes his naps seriously.”

“Oh, okay.” Rosa snorted. “What?” Amy pulled back defensively in her seat.

Like it was a dance, Rosa leaned forward, filling the space Amy had just made. “It’s hot when you do that.”

Amy very nearly choked, in spite of the fact that there was nothing to choke on. “Do what?”

Rosa’s smiled her teeth-baring grin again, which helped nothing. “That blushing thing. Do it again.”

Flabbergasted, Amy couldn’t help but do it again. “I don’t- that’s not a thing I can just do on command.” Rosa raised an eyebrow, and Amy took a breath to recover. “I…” Amy pressed her lips together firmly to give herself a second. “Aren’t you waiting for someone?”

“You just asked that.”

“I mean- you can’t just say that I’m doing something ‘hot’ while you’re waiting for someone,” Amy stammered. “It’s ridiculous, for one, it’s not true, for another, and it seems disrespectful to the person you’re waiting for.”

“Huh?” Rosa screwed up her face in confusion. “How?” Before Amy could put it in plain terms, the door to the bar opened, and Rosa turned her head. She seemed to lose temporary interest in the conversation- a good thing for Amy, because it forced Amy to stop speaking, and a bad thing because Amy was surprisingly annoyed that Rosa was paying attention to something else.

Rosa nodded towards the man that walked into the bar, and he nodded back, that solid single-movement nod perfected by people way too cool to wave (cooler, occasionally, than Amy). The newcomer walked over to the table, grabbing a chair on the way over and dragging it to the table.

“Am I interrupting something?” He didn’t wait for anyone to respond to him. “Of course I am. Couldn’t wait a little bit for me for me, huh?” He shook his head and tsked- but in shaking his head really noticed Amy for the first time. “Hello.” She made a face at his tone. “And I am incredibly rude for not introducing myself. Jake. Jake Peralta.”

“Jake, Amy.” Rosa handled the introductions sharply, succinctly. “Amy, Jake. He’s the asshole I told you about.” Jake shook his head no, opening his mouth to argue the point. “She’s not interested.” She spoke to Jake, but kept her eyes on Amy; her gaze alone was a question that made Amy blush for what felt like the twentieth time that night.

Still, the fact that Rosa made the situation- insomuch as it was a situation beyond two women talking in a bar- clear made a thrill curl up Amy’s stomach and spine. She smiled- no, beamed- in Jake’s direction, and couldn’t help but pose a little with the angle of her shoulders as she confirmed Rosa’s statement. “No offense, Jake, I’m sure you’re a great guy and all-”

“He’s not,” Rosa assured her, while Jake countered with, “I am.”

Amy hesitated at both interjections, blinking. “-but I’m…” She smiled over at Rosa, and her already large smile became overlarge, “…not interested.” She hoped- hoped- that made it clear enough for Rosa and Jake both that there was someone at the table she was interested in. She nearly frowned, immediately worried that she was being too forward, but then recovered; after all, it wasn’t as if Rosa had been being coy, right?

Jake shrugged. “Your loss.”

He didn’t sound nearly as crude as Amy would have expected, but still… “I’m sure,” she replied dryly.

“So what were you two ladies doing besides drinking the drink I should have drinking hours ago?” Jake asked. It was unfortunate that as much as he got one part of the message, he wasn’t moving. Although, Amy supposed, Rosa had been waiting for him in the first place.

Rosa rolled her eyes. “I’ve gotta jet,” she told Amy. “We’ve got things to do. You got a phone?”

Amy was disappointed for a beat, but brightened up with an exuberant nod. “Absolutely. Of course.” Did she sound too excited? Maybe. Probably. She should have probably relaxed, but she’d already said it, so she hoped that her more somber expression covered up for it. Jake’s amused sidelong expression towards Rosa said otherwise. Rosa sighed and gestured towards Amy. “Right.” Amy dug in her jacket pocket for her phone- an action that the drinks they’d shared made slightly more difficult than it should have been- and passed it over to Rosa.

Two seconds later Rosa handed Amy back the phone. “Text me.”

Amy had to remind herself to stop nodding once Rosa and Jake had left the table.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy talks to Holt about work and hunting. Gina, Boyle and Peralta weigh in on Rosa and Amy.

Gina’s foot was up on the table, and most of her focus was on painting them Rimmel’s 60 Second Silver Bullet. “So, like…are human’s your thing now?”

“What?” Rosa was 50% watching a basketball game, 50% absorbed in a text message conversation, and 0% paying attention to Gina.

“Are they your ‘thing’,” Gina repeated, speaking slower as if she thought Rosa didn’t understand the words as opposed to didn’t care about them. “Your kink?”

Jake made a sound from next to Rosa like Gina had somehow owned Rosa and needed props for it; Rosa didn’t bother to respond to Jake so much as kick him, hard. The automatic whimper that came out of his mouth was satisfying, and Rosa snorted in amusement. She still didn’t look up at her pack; she didn’t need to.

The pack was small, with only the four of them calling their den (a halfway gutted warehouse on the corner of shitsville and no-one’s place) home. They talked enough collective shit for a dozen werewolves, and Rosa didn’t need to encourage them. Gina and Jake could go on for hours, either back and forth or like a running monologue for whoever was listening.

“Well I think it’s nice.” ‘Whoever was listening’ usually meant Charles. “Rosa should have friends.”

“Rosa should have friends.”

That made Rosa pause, turning around in her seat and leaning an arm on the back of the couch. “What’s that supposed to mean?” And then, “and are you still pick out dinner, man? It’s been a damn half an hour.”

Jake and Gina were both groaning even before Charles started to defend himself. “I’ll have you know that within our neighborhood, there are over a dozen four star or higher rated places that we can choose from. Considering we don’t actually pay rent here,” and he gestured around the warehouse, “I’m not actually able to narrow it down by places that delivery. Without that parameter, the options are, at first glance, overwhelming, but I’ve actually figured out a rubric in which-”

“Cut it out, make a choice, or I’ll let Gina order again,” Rosa ordered.

Charles blanched. “Oh, no no no, if you do that-”

Gina smiled. “Definitely that burger joint again.”

“But the burgers are-” Rosa let a small, warning growl slip, and Charles took a deep, pained breath. He worked better with direct orders. He looked down at the menus and started eliminating restaurants as he spoke, much more quickly than he had before. “As I was saying, I think it’s nice that you’re talking to people outside the pack. It’s good for you- we never see you do it.”

“We never see you do anything,” Jake muttered under his breath. Another swift kick, and it was amazing how easily Rosa could keep them in line without paying too close attention to them.

Jake yelped. “What, am I wrong? I’ve known you since I got bit, and I don’t think I see you do more than growl at us- super rude, by the way, you should be ashamed at your manners- and watch the game with us.”

“Thank you Jake,” Charles said grateful. “And we’re having barbecue, in case anyone’s interested.” No one would care much until Charles actually went and got the food, so there was no response. “Rosa, all of us get out except for you.”

“I get out,” Rosa countered sourly.

“We mean for more than a bar brawl and sex,” Gina replied smoothly.

“What’s the problem with a bar brawl and sex?” Rosa wanted to know. “I like fighting, I like sex.”

Jake got up from the couch to go to the refrigerator. “And who doesn’t?” Opening the fridge, he pulled out a beer. He’d stolen the appliance a few nights after they’d moved into the neighborhood, carrying it on his back while he made Charles carry the television they were now watching. Rosa felt the same way about how they got those things as she did about however Charles had rigged the electricity and television up, which was to say she was all for it.

Jake passed his beer to Charles, who obediently opened it against the counter and handed it back. Taking a drink from the bottle, Jake continued. “I mean, we know I get out, do the whole dating thing-”

“…badly,” Gina added.

Jake rolled his eyes. “Gina has her dancing team- how she manages to find a new one in every city and town we go to is amazing by the way, a real talent-”

“I’m just good at meeting people, I guess.”

“And Charles has his foodie meet-ups, singles’ nights, lonely-book-reader clubs, and the sound of customer service for when he gets really lonely,” Jake finished. He slung an arm around Charles amiably, giving the man a quick squeeze. “The point I’m trying to make here is that you…you don’t have anybody else that you see more than once besides us. A little weird, a little suffocating, a little creepy when you think about it…”

Rosa blinked. “Jake, we’re a five wolf pack that moves from city to city every couple of months. I don’t want to get to know new people.” She’d avoided it fairly well in most places they’d called home. It was easy enough to avoid getting close to people by being herself; intimidating and aggressive she usually only attracted the type that were interested in only what she was interested in- fighting or fucking. She didn’t need validation like Charles or an audience like Gina or Jake- she had hers, and she was good with that.

Her phone buzzed with a new text message and she looked at it. She almost smiled at it, until she heard the chorus of ‘ooo’s from her peanut gallery. She glared at them- Jake first, because Jake was always the one to blame for that sort of thing, and once he shut up the rest of them would.

“You don’t want to, and yet here you are, texting Miss cute and blushing for like the trillionth time tonight,” Jake pointed out. “And yeah, I said trillionth. It’s been that many times. I counted.”

“You’re an idiot,” Rosa snapped. “And who says it’s her anyway?”

“Well, let’s see,” Jake passed his beer over to Boyle again so he could start striking points off on his finger. “One, I was there when you guys exchanged digits. You wanted her, she wanted you, pretty obvious. Two, you never give anyone your number, in case someone actually calls you. Three, you’ve come in three in the past three weeks smelling not just like you, but like a certain perfume that I happen to remember was worn by Miss cute and blush-”

“Her name’s Amy. Amy Santiago.”

“And of course there’s reason four: you know exactly who we’re talking about and you cared enough to correct me on her name when I intentionally pretended to not know it,” Jake continued smoothly. “Congrats! You’ve officially proven to us that you’re totally into this woman, and that’s good, that’s great, go for it, we applaud you.” Charles had Jake’s beer at his lips when Jake took it back. “Don’t you have BBQ to get?”

Rosa sighed deeply, trying to ignore Jake’s statement while texting Amy back. Jake made it difficult to ignore him when he started to get going, but Rosa had a lot of practice. More than anyone with sense should have, actually.

“You still didn’t answer my question, Rosa,” Gina drawled, dropping one foot to the floor and slamming the other one up on the table so she could finish painting her toys. “Is this a thing now? Like, should we expect you to start adopting cute little humans, or is it like-”

“It’s like you should shut your mouth about who I date, Gina,” Rosa cut her off before Gina got to whatever it was that she was about to spring on them.

“So you are dating then, huh?” Gina practically purred.

Rosa pushed herself off the couch with a frustrated groan. “I’m going with Charles to get dinner. Charles, let’s go.” Charles leapt to it immediately, grabbing both of their jackets. “When I come back, I don’t want to hear anything but the score,” she gestured to the television, “got it?”

Jake held up his hands. “Whatever you say, boss.”

At least Charles would let her mostly text in peace. Mostly.

 

Holt glanced at the weapons that Amy had in front of her. “Your shotgun looks good. Clean. It was your father’s, correct?”

“Oh this one?” Amy responded quickly. Too quickly. Definitely too quickly. “My brother’s, actually. My oldest brother’s. My father hunted demons, actually, and so his shotgun has the Ban-”

“Banishing Rites of the Eternal Monk, yes, Miss Santiago, I am aware of the necessary inscriptions.”

“Of course you are, why wouldn’t you be?” Amy said. “You know a so much about hunting, of course you’d know the basics of demon hunting and I wouldn’t need to explain it to-” Holt’s unchanging expression managed to indicate that she should stop rambling and continue on to something more useful to the conversation. “Anyway, my oldest brother took up werewolf hunting pretty early on, before moving to vampires when…well, he got kind of bored.” She held up her hands. “Not because werewolves are easy or anything, but because he was hunting them for like five years and wanted to switch things up.”

Holt had been examining the craftsmanship of Amy’s shotgun- it truly was the best hand-me-down that she’d ever received-, but she swore he almost chuckled fondly. “Yes, well, for a family like yours, I understand the desire to seek new challenges. But there’s something to be said for perfecting your craft.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Amy said, gesturing excitedly. She instantly regretted her own enthusiasm and put her hands in her lap with a forcefulness that was almost as bad as the initial enthusiasm itself. “I mean, I feel the same way. My goal is to become one of the best werewolf hunters of all time- it’s why I asked to join your team.”

She couldn’t be the best while traveling with her brothers- at best they would let her go after creatures that they weren’t interested in. Amy wanted to really perfect her craft, and so she needed to learn from the best. And Holt was most definitely the best.

“I see…” Amy wasn’t sure how to take the statement- whether Holt was disappointed with her or merely acknowledging that he’d heard her speak. “Has Jeffords talked to you about your patrols recently?”

To say that she was panicked by the question was an understatement. She knew her patrols had been going poorly, they had been for awhile. She knew she was supposed to be keeping an eye out for anything non-human in the city right now, any patterns that stuck out as strange or new.

Truth was, she wasn’t finding anything. Patrols with Hitchcock and Scully were mostly pointless to begin with- what if they did run into something, what was Amy supposed to do saddled with either of them?-, and it was compounded by the fact that there really wasn’t anything to find when she was out. On one hand it sucked, because she really wanted to impress Holt, but on the other, it had left a quite a bit of time to talk to and see Rosa. Which wasn’t something she was going to share with Holt right now.

“No, sir, he hasn’t.”

Holt took a moment to find an extra folding chair, and brought it over to Amy’s work table. The hunting party had rented a space typically used for art studios- it had furniture and space that was extremely useful when needing to lay out weapons. Amy had taken over one of the longer tables for the evening, spreading out the contents of her weapons bag so that she could clean anything that needed to be cleaned. It was a nightly ritual for her, something as comforting to her as her blanket and nightlight had been as a child.

“I selected this city, as you well know,” Holt began, “because of reports from other hunting teams, information given to me by local medical examiners, that sort of thing.” He picked up one of the large silver-plated hollow bullets that Amy had laid out, examining it casually. “There is most definitely a werewolf pack that has decided to make this city its home. A dangerous pack.” Amy nodded somberly, listening raptly to every word. “It is my belief that the particular pack that’s settled in here is the same pack that has been terrorizing the east coast for quite some time. If I’m right, which I believe I am…I’m sure you understand how important it is for us to track down this pack, yes?”

Amy nodded again. “It would be amazing that pack’s here!” She paused. “I mean, not amazing, just…we’ll definitely track them down.”

“We need to do it before they move again,” Holt clarified. “And I think…I think I can rely on you to be my go to on this. I can, correct”

“Absolutely!” Amy wouldn’t have been surprised, in that moment, had she had to catch her own heart from leaping out her chest. Holt trusted her to be is go-to? He could one hundred percent go to her on any of this- except she hadn’t been able to do much yet, had she? Besides aimlessly wander the city and find little to aide her. “What do you need me to do?”

Putting the bullet back down on the table, Holt took a moment to pull a flash drive out of his shirt pocket. Amy took it as reverently as she might have taken her father’s exorcism manuals. “I need you to look at this. It’s a list of all the information I have on this so far. Locations of suspicious deaths, areas for likely dens, the information we know so far on the attacks before they arrived here. I want your insight. Narrow down the field of possible dens for me. I want to concentrate our efforts on places that are of importance.”

Amy beamed. “I’m on it,” she assured him. “I’ll get this done for you ASAP. I promise you won’t regret it.”

“I know I won’t.” Holt’s statement sounded both like an assurance and a statement of fact- as if once he’d given the order, there was no way that she could even think of failing him.

Of course, now she was thinking of all the ways she could fail almost as quickly as she was coming up with ways to approach this. But she wouldn’t let that distract her, not now, anyway.

Holt stood up and tapped the table. “Get back to me on this soon, Santiago.”

She absolutely would, of course. As she grabbed her laptop she reached to get her phone. While she wouldn’t get into specifics, she definitely had to let Rosa know how she’d impressed her boss.

It was unfortunate how she had to speak to Rosa in almosts and non-specifics, but plenty of people did that, right? They didn’t get into the details of their jobs, or their personal life before dating this particular person…Rosa certainly didn’t. And anyway, Amy reminded herself, it wasn’t as if Rosa would believe her if they talked about Amy’s work.

She couldn’t exactly tell her she made a living hunting werewolves, could she?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dating and phone tag, Rosa and Amy style.

The first selfie Amy sent Rosa had her hair up in a sloppy work-out ponytail. The straps of a blue tank top were visible, but beyond that, the picture was too close to show much of the room. Amy’s expression was exaggerated, comical disgust and exhaustion.

 _@ the gym_ was the text underneath. Ugh.

She sent the text and then tucked the phone into the side pocket of her bag before turning back to the sparring mat. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath, getting into a solid fighting stance. “Count of three, Terry?”

 

_Sup with u?_

Rosa was waiting for a text from Amy while watching Gina shake mud off her fur. It flew in the air, hitting her- but not as badly as Charles got it. Charles was already complaining, while Gina ignored him.

She checked her phone maybe twice more than she normally would- normally she’d never check in between signals, but Amy was usually pretty good with replying, and Jake had gotten into the habit of stealing Rosa’s phone whenever he could and muting it to fuck with her.

But she could only look at the phone for a few moments before she decided to give into the fact that her skin felt stretched under her leather jacket and jeans, and the pier by the warehouse was going to be empty all night. She passed her phone to Gina- who wasn’t interested in running with them tonight for some reason- and started to strip. She’d check her phone when she wasn’t shifting.

 

_Raincheck. Work is a beast._

So what if the text was also a bad inside joke? Amy thought that it got her message across just fine. She’d have to put their date- god, had she really been in this city for long enough she was attempting to have regular dates with someone in it?- on hold for the night.

Work, unfortunately, wasn’t even a real beast. It was like a tiny beast; a small infestation of imps that the hunters had stumbled upon while following up one of the several locations that Holt had given her. They were nasty little things- one had tried to set Scully’s feet on fire, and another that Amy had only just gotten out of her hair a few minutes ago. She’d had to shoot one off of Holt with a crossbow bolt, actually.

He’d said he was impressed by her aim but would rather she not shoot at his skull again. He’d been impressed.

 

Rosa didn’t send Amy a selfie, but she did send her a picture of Jake sprawled across the laps of both Charles and Gina, smiling and waving. Look what I’m stuck with when you cancel on me. Idiots.

She wasn’t mad at Amy; frustrated at the fact that they’d been playing tag for what felt like forever. Sick to death of just remembering what Amy smelled like instead of being near her. The time and space between dates was starting to feel like the itch under Rosa’s skin near the full moon.

It was weird, kind of freaky. Rosa wasn’t sure if she liked the itch, but she knew she liked Amy. Which was something. Something better than hanging with the losers she called a pack, anyway. The thought almost made her smile. Almost.

 

“Oh, this is definitely werewolf fur,” Jeffords said. “One of them probably brushed up against this and got caught on the door hinge.

They were downtown, and Jeffords was crouched by the backdoor of a nightclub. Amy was thrilled, seeing how it had been her idea in the first place to check out this location next. She’d walked past this nightclub a couple of times with Rosa, after hanging out at the bar down the street- they’d even considered checking it out.

There had been little things about it that made Amy think ‘possible paranormal hang out,’ from the cast of characters she saw going in and out of it, to the low volume of people coming in and out of it the night after a full moon. So when it showed up on the list of places that Holt thought might actually be a werewolf den, she knew they had to check it out.

And she was right. They had been there, they had actually been there.

Her phone buzzed twice, and her hand went to her pocket automatically. No, she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t text Rosa during important parts of patrols- anyway, if Jeffords turned and saw her texting right now, she’d be mortified. So she promised herself that she’d text Rosa the moment they were done here.

Maybe they’d even have celebratory drinks.

 

_Your place. Not mine. Roommates._

Although, technically, Rosa could have told all of them to scram- and they would have scattered even if it wasn’t a direct order. Looking around the warehouse, though, with their rigged electricity and acquired furniture and Gina’s crap lyrca jumpsuits all over the place, she’d rather not spend the night with Amy surrounded by any of it.

They planned while Rosa worked out- replying to texts between reps. They planned for a raincheck date too, just in case, because every other date they’d attempted to have recently had been pushed back at some point. Amy spent a lot of time on the phone overly apologetic. It was so hyperactively genuine that Rosa couldn’t help but believe her- and it wasn’t as if Rosa hadn’t had to cancel and rearrange things too, recently.

Rosa blamed Jake. She usually did when things got annoying.

 

Their phones were abandoned on the counter in Amy’s kitchen. The shit apartment she was renting at least meant that she didn’t have to share her living space with any of the other hunters; she always insisted on her own place or she started feeling like she was back home with her brothers.

She didn’t have to think about any of that now, though. She let out a surprised laughed as Rosa moved the both of them- moved Amy, really, picked her up so that Amy could wrap her legs around Rosa’s hips and waist. It was only for a minute; just enough for Rosa to get Amy on the counter by the sink, and just fast enough that Amy hit her head slightly on the cabinet. She winced, hand to the back of her head, and both of them snorted in laughter.

Rosa pulled her in for another kiss, and Amy didn’t unwrap her legs from around her partner for a second.

Amy missed two calls, Rosa missed one.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunters go after the wolves.

Rosa’s bra was shoved into the bottom of Amy’s ever-present weapons bag. The woman had left it at Amy’s the night before, and Amy had texted her to let her know. The plan was, when Amy finally got through with work in the early hours of the morning, she’d meet up with Rosa and…return it. At least, that was the pretext that the two had very obviously set up, and the anticipation of that alone was enough to make Amy beam.

There was work to do first, though, and the anticipation of tonight’s work was the only thing that could rival her excitement over the date.

“Santiago, would you like to give everyone the rundown?” Holt gestured towards her, and she bounced up like a rabbit. Any faster, she probably would have tripped over herself on her way around the table to the foot of it. “Seeing as this is your find.”

Her find. The biggest downside of the current group of hunters, even more so, honestly, than Scully and Hitchcock’s ability to completely check out of reality, was that there was no one to really turn and gloat to when Holt said that. Yes, Jeffords and Holt were both proud of her and ready for her to, apparently, take the lead for a moment, but she still didn’t get that ha moment that she would have gotten with her brothers, or even with Rosa. That moment of having won over someone.

Which…wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking, but she couldn’t help herself. There was no real harm in a little healthy competition anyway, and Amy strongly believed she excelled even more knowing that someone else lost.

She’d worked for this moment, from the moment that she’d made the decision to seek training away from her family, to the moment she’d approached Ray Holt and asked him for a spot with his hunters, through to these past few weeks. She’d pored over the information that Holt had provided her, and as a result had finally narrowed all of possibilities down to one solid lead. She had a hard time not floating on her own enthusiasm, over the rest of them. Instead, she stood by the dry erase board near the foot of the table. On the table, they had all the files that Holt had provided her, on the suspicious deaths in the city. The dry erase board was half-covered with a map of the city, littered with incident markers that corresponded to the information on the table.

Smiling broadly over at Holt, she nodded that she was ready. He gave her such a stern eyebrow raise- not that he ever gave any look that wasn’t stern, ever- that she quickly cleared her throat and attempted a more somber, serious approach.

“We all know why we’re here,” Amy started, pressing her lips together between sentences to keep the corners of them from curling up excitedly. “The pack that we’ve been tracking has done extensive damage throughout the east coast…but we know that they’re in this city. And now, after eliminating all the other possibilities, I-” She paused, and then corrected herself as she felt Jeffords throwing her a look, “we’ve figured out the most likely location for their current den.”

She laid out the plan quickly; there wasn’t much to it aside from where people were going to enter the warehouse from. Holt and Hitchcock would be going in from the front of the warehouse, while Amy and Scully would move in from the back.

“Jeffords,” Holt tried for what might have been the dozenth time, “I’d appreciate having you in there with us.”

Jeffords looked spooked for a moment, as if Holt might press the point. “No, I’m…” He shook his head. “I’ve uh, still-”

“We can use you as a look out anyway,” Amy interjected. “If you don’t think you’re ready to go in with us.” Jeffords looked doubtful about that, too, unsurprisingly. “You’ll just be on the walkie-talkies letting us know if it looks like there are more of the pack coming from outside, or if the local police show up.” Not that Amy was worried about that; one of the reasons that the warehouse was chosen clearly had to do with how poorly patrolled the piers were.

“I know what to do it’s just uh…”

Amy reached her hand out sympathetically, but pulled it back in case Holt or Jeffords thought she was being too much. “Don’t worry, Terry, it won’t be a problem.”

 

“Gina, where are you going?” Rosa was doing the dishes. While it wasn’t late, the pack had mostly settled in for the evening. But while Rosa had switched into her sweats and t-shirt for the night, Gina was fully dressed and ready to go out. With, Rosa couldn’t help but notice, the purse that Peralta had described as ‘perfect for sneaking out a department store filled with dishwashers.’ So Rosa was curious. Suspicious even.

Gina shrugged. “Oh, me and a couple of homies were going down to 34th street and-”

“And you’re not going to steal any nonessentials,” Rosa finished for her. And then she wrinkled her nose. “And what ‘homies’?”

“Dance troupe, duh,” Gina replied, offended. “Just because you only have one bestie, doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have real friends.”

Rosa didn’t waste energy glaring. “Huh.” She reached out to grab her phone where she’d left it.

“What?” Gina asked.

Rosa shook her head. “Nothing. Just remembered she has something of mine.” Rosa thought about how Amy had ended up with said thing. She thought about Amy unhooking it, she remembered how it was Amy’s favorite bra of hers…she remembered tossing it, and Amy’s, into a pile of Amy’s clothes while they made their way to the bed.

Way more interesting thoughts than anything about Gina, to be honest. She’d practically forgotten about Gina until Gina left. And when she realized Gina had left, she wasn’t that concerned either. She was already busy texting Amy to remind her that they should meet up so that Rosa could get her bra back.

Or something like that.

 

Amy did have it together, even if Jeffords didn’t exactly. She’d planned for- imagined- her first real big hunt since she was listening to her mother and father trade stories when she was little. She even had the exact collection of weapons that she’d planned out when she was fourteen.She dressed like she thought a prepped hunter should dress- dark blue cargos, black boots, a black hoodie with a white t-shirt underneath (her logic was that if she was walking around with the hoodie unzipped, the dark blue and white would make her less suspicious looking than wearing all black, but with the hoodie closed, she could easily move in the shadows). Her brother’s shotgun was strapped to her back, and she had a small pistol on her thigh, both toting silver bullets. She had a silver-edged dagger too, on the opposite hip from her pistol.

She was ready- even if she was stuck going into the warehouse with Scully.

Okay, so that wasn’t ideal. She tried to tell herself on the way over that Scully had a lot of experience as a werewolf hunter- he and Hitchcock had both been out hunting for as long as Holt had. They had nearly fifty years combined experience, Jeffords liked to remind Amy- so why did it feel like she’d been doing this for longer than the both of them?

Scully spent part of the trip to the warehouse idly grousing (idly grousing- who even did that? Why was that a thing?) about needing a new pair of boots to hunt in. When Jeffords asked why he hadn’t bought a new pair beforehand, Scully stared blankly and replied that it hadn’t occurred to him.

Hadn’t occurred to him? Amy couldn’t imagine a single essential thing about werewolf hunting- including footwear- that wouldn’t occur to her. Amy’s boots had gel soles.

Automatically, her hand went to her pocket to grab her phone- it was funny, how in the past few weeks she’d become so accustomed to checking for text messages that she was checking when she didn’t even have her phone on her. Her phone was tucked away in an inside pocket of her weapons bag, which was in Jefford’s trunk. She had the major essentials, and she’d told Rosa that she wouldn’t have access to her phone tonight anyway.

 

Rosa remembered Amy saying something about not being near her phone tonight, but only after twenty minutes of waiting for a reply. Amy was usually so immediate about everything; even text messages rarely went more than fifteen minutes with being replied to. “Shit.”

Drying her hands off on a dish towel, Rosa grabbed her phone and went to stretch out on the cot she was using for a bed. While there were things that she was willing to buy or steal to make the warehouse livable, she hadn’t yet convinced herself to grab a more sturdy bed. The pack was rarely anyplace longer than six months, after all, and it didn’t make sense to get a new bed in each location.

Right by her head was a calendar, one of the only things beside a phone that Rosa always made sure to have with her. Not that it was necessary, really, but she always marked off the full moon every month, always crossed off days leading up to the change. It was a bit of routine that made her feel good. She turned to the side to look at the calendar now; a week and a half until the next change.

Maybe this time she wouldn’t have to chase Boyle around a zoo. Or Peralta, for that matter.

 

“Scully, are you paying attention?” Amy hissed, her patience unraveling by the second. “We’re moving on the count of three, okay?” She wondered how far she’d have to tilt her head before it just fell off her neck completely, and whether tonight Scully would actually cause that to happen. She reminded herself that she did have good back up- Holt, however hampered by Hitchcock he might be, would be fine, and Jeffords was in the car if absolutely necessary. She took a deep breath.

 

Peralta was being loud. “Hey, Rosa, you smell that?”

Rosa was already sitting up, sniffing the air in confusion. She’d grown used to Amy’s smell, to her particular perfume- light and barely traceable, but still there. She’d grown used to it sticking to her clothes after leaving Amy’s apartment. She’d spent nights with her face in the curve of Amy’s shoulder, inhaling her scent and committing it to memory. It was always there.

But because Amy never came to the warehouse, it was neverstrong there. It was something that Rosa brought in with her, that Peralta and Gina and Boyle teased her about.

And it certainly didn’t come with the smell of anybody else with it. Even more importantly- Rosa had never told Amy where she lived. It all felt wrong, and Rosa didn’t like it. There were a million stupid what if scenarios in her head- mostly involving Amy in trouble. Involving werewolf hunters who might have tracked Rosa without her knowing, who might have touched Amy-

They hadn’t had to deal with hunters in a long time- that had been the whole point of hopping between cities, after all. She and Peralta stared at each other. His eyes flashed yellow, and as Rosa tensed, she knew hers likely did the same. “Boyle?”

“Asleep,” Peralta answered, already starting to pull off his pants and shirt to shift forms “Gina?”

“Out.” Rosa sent Gina a text to stay out, at least until Rosa told her otherwise- The scents were circling the warehouse. She didn’t expect Gina back for awhile, anyway. Then Rosa shifted.

 

The most ‘advanced’ piece of technology they all carried- if it could really be called advanced- were earpieces that kept them all in contact. They all knew not to use them too often, since they didn’t want to add sound to the ways that the wolves could track them (scent was bad enough, but at close range they couldn’t always use smell to tell the difference between a few yards of movement). It was used sparingly, and even then, they whispered.

Holt was the first one to break radio silence, and even then it was brief. “There’s someone out here, Santiago. Your call.”

Maybe later she would rethink this, consider that maybe she and Scully could have used the back up. Maybe she would be glad to have the opportunity to show Holt what she was capable of. There were a lot of possibilities, and it was Amy’s pride that won out. “You and Hitchcock check it out. We’re good.” Holt didn’t respond; Amy didn’t need him to.

The backdoor of the warehouse wasn’t locked; it wasn’t even blocked. For a moment Amy worried that meant that the location was a dud, that she’d focused on the wrong information and that they’d be back to square one- that Holt would be embarrassed.

But then a dim light shut off further into the warehouse, and the hunters were in darkness. A thrill of excitement shot up her spine. She was prepared for this- one of the other things she’d brought in with her were nightvision goggles. She pulled them down over her face and turned them on- just in time to hear Scully get slammed against the wall.

 

Had Rosa not already shifted, four paws on the the ground and ready to rumble, she probably would have told Peralta to fucking wait. To see what the situation was before pouncing. But she wasn’t, and there was still Amy’s scent, and the scent of strangers coming into her damn warehouse. So she let Peralta be Peralta. And that meant he leapt head on at one of the intruders.

As a wolf, once she got closer, it was easy to see Peralta’s handiwork. It was definitely a hunter that he’d pounced on- the man had dropped his shotgun when Peralta attacked. He was older than Rosa would have expected, and now that she was closer to him definitely smelled like feet and old hummus. But regardless of the unpleasant odor, he was knocked out, sprawled pathetically on the ground. Peralta was standing by him, growling threateningly.

Whoever that asshole was, he wasn’t what Rosa had to worry about. The hunter still standing with the gun in her hand, though, was.

But Rosa knew that smell, and felt the hold she had on her form start to fall apart. She was sharply aware of her mouth going dry, of it staying dry as she felt her front legs become her arms, as she felt muscles change and skin shift. She was crouched, while Peralta’s growl grew louder- a threat so that the hunter would know what he’d do she fired a shot.

But the hunter was as frozen as Rosa was. More frozen, even, because Rosa knew that if anyone made a move, Rosa would protect Peralta. Pack. But still…

 

Amy’s mouth gaped, and her heart and chest and stomach all at once felt as if they’d collapsed onto the floor of the warehouse. She was tempted to rip the nightvision goggles off, as if they were somehow what was truly impeding her from understanding what was going on. As if the darkness would somehow make more sense of what was going on.

She was facing two werewolves, and Scully was knocked out. That was already so wildly far from what she’d expected, what she’d planned, that she didn’t know what to do next. And then there was…there wasRosa, there was no mistaking that hair, the angles and curves of her long body, and Amy’s eyes were suddenly stinging.

“Uh oh,” she found herself saying hollowly. Then, lamely, “…your bra’s in my bag.”

Peralta’s growling didn’t stop.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth about both Amy and Rosa are revealed, and they are faced with a split second decision.

“…Your bra’s in my bag.”

Rosa wanted to punch a wall. Amy was nauseatingly, sincerely flummoxed, with horror starting to dawn across her expression. The exaggeration of her features, though, did nothing to loosen the grip she had on her shotgun, or the tension in her stance. She wasn’t firing now, but a second ago she’d planned on firing- a second from now, she might just pull that trigger. Rosa growled in frustration, and as if to prove her point, Amy took a quick step back and resteadied her gun.

“I’m not going to attack you,” Rosa said flatly. Her voice still rumbled, still not quite back to human. The sound didn’t exactly convince Amy, not really, but that might have been Jake’s fault- he was still snarling protectively only a few feet away. “Jake, lay off.” He didn’t stop, didn’t even look Rosa’s way. She turned her head quickly and growled back at him, until his snarling became a yelp and he stepped off. She brought her focus back to the girlfriend with the gun pointed at her. “He’s not going to do anything stupid, so you don’t either.”

“Stupid like, I don’t know,” Amy stammered, shrugging, “Dating a werewolf when you’re a werewolf hunter and not knowing that she’s a-”

“No. Stupider than that.” Like being a werewolf and not knowing that your girlfriend was a hunter. Rosa really wanted to punch that wall right now- how could she have missed it? She hadn’t been looking for it, that was a big part of it, she knew- she’d gotten comfortable, complacent. Thought that everything would be cool because Amy was hot and had that smile, and hadn’t tried to shove a gun in her face for the first month or two of their relationship. “Wait- you didn’t know? You’re a hunter, and you didn’t know?”

That seemed almost more absurd than Rosa’s self-chastising, now that she thought about it. Rosa could buy a hunter trying to get close to a wolf, tricking them into going to their den…but that’s not what this moment was. If that was Amy’s plan, she would have fired at Rosa and Jake already. Rosa would be, at best, helping Jake deal with a bullet, and at worse she’d be dead. The stand off, and Amy’s expression, was enough to say that Amy was as flabbergasted as Rosa was-

-and more importantly, didn’t know what she was going to do next.

“No, of course I didn’t know!” Amy hissed. “What, do you think I usually go around dating werewolves? Because I don’t- it’s not exactly good for my career…” She swallowed, shook her head, and readjusted her shotgun. “Shit, shit, shit…you’re the pack. The pack that’s been killing- You’re part of the pack that I’ve been tracking-”

“What are you talking about?” Rosa stood up. Amy blinked at the movement, and it took Rosa a moment to look down and realize why. “Get over it,” she said, already moving to the side. Amy snapped her shotgun back, training it on Rosa. Jake started to move, but glanced back at Rosa hesitantly, one paw raised. “I’m grabbing my clothes so you don’t keep staring and losing focus. How long do we have until whoever else you were with comes in.” Amy opened her mouth but sound didn’t immediately come from it. “My pack isn’t killing anyone. We don’t do that.” They were way more likely to throttle each other, to be honest. “I wouldn’t let that happen. That’s stupid.”

“Stupid?” Amy let out a laugh of disbelief as Rosa grabbed her underwear from where she’d abandoned it. “No, it’s murder and-” She narrowed her eyes. “Why would I tell you anything?”

“Because I need to know how long I have before some idiot comes in here shooting at my head,” Rosa snapped, stepping into her panties. A quick glance around , and she found her t-shirt too.

Amy was silent for a moment, her hand going to her ear. Rosa thought about how stupid the move was- how she could have easily taken the gun at that point. “Status?” A pause, and then Amy responded to whoever was on the other end. She looked pale. “Stay where you are. I don’t want to make too much noise.” She locked eyes with Rosa, her expression both panicked and pleading. Rosa watched her shaky breaths as Amy lowered her hand. This time, she lowered the gun. “They aren’t…they aren’t coming in.”

“But?” There was something. There always was.

Amy swallowed and shook her head no. “We’ve been following your pack for months- nearly a year. More than a year, really, when it was just rumors. You…oh my god, you-”

“Amy, I’m taking a step closer to you, okay?” Amy nodded dumbly as Rosa finished pulling on her shirt and walked closer. Again, she thought about how easy it would be to just get rid of that gun, but she wasn’t risking Amy telling the rest of her hunters to come in- not with Jake on edge, and wherever the fuck Boyle was, and Gina not being back yet. She raised her hands and put them on Amy’s shoulders. “These are my wolves, Amy. My pack. We don’t kill. I know who you thought we were, but we’re not that pack.”

“There’s another pack?” Amy shook her head. “That’s impossible. Ridiculous-”

Rosa glared. “Are you calling me a liar?” The look that Amy through back made it clear she wasn’t sure how she wanted to answer that. Rosa sighed, shaking her head. “Longer we talk, the more likely my pack ends up dead. Are we fighting, or are we running?” Rosa had to cut through the awkward tension, because she couldn’t deal with wasting time- or the look on Amy’s face. The look on Amy’s face was bound to either piss her off or break her heart, and tonight wasn’t the night she wanted to figure it out.

The directness seemed to help, Amy, at least. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Shit…” Amy thought for a moment, before nodding to herself. “Clear out. I’ll, um…fire a shot or two into the wall, draw their attention when you’re gone.” It was more of a solid plan than Rosa would have expected. “Go, before I regret risking my entire career for you.”

Rosa tilted her chin up, narrowing her eyes as she took Amy in. They hadn’t been honest about what Amy did for a living, but Rosa was well aware of what Amy’s career meant to her. She hadn’t known the implications of it, perhaps, didn’t know what it all entailed.

That, plus the simple plan, made something swell in Rosa’s chest. After a second’s evaluation, she was sure that it was beyond pride- it was straight up respect. “I owe you one.” Amy’s jaw clenched, and Rosa wondered what it was she wasn’t saying. “Jake,” Rosa barked without turning, “Get Charles, make sure you have your phone, and go through…”

“…the way I came in,” Amy filled in.

“You heard her,” Rosa finished. “You’ve got thirty seconds. Now.” Jake moved so quickly it that the order seemed like overkill. Rosa threw Amy a look. “Your friend wasn’t bit. He’ll be fine.”

“I know.” Again, there were a dozen things that Amy wasn’t saying, but she wasn’t holding the gun up in Rosa’s face. “I still…uh…”

“I see you again without a gun,” Rosa interjected. “Maybe I let you return it to me.”

Five minutes later, far enough from the warehouse where she could breathe, Rosa heard a shotgun blast. “It’s going to be a pain in the ass to find somewhere else to stay,” Rosa muttered, trying her best not to think about everything else that was going to come after.

Trying not to think of the fact that Gina hadn’t replied to Rosa’s message yet.

 

Amy was facing a knocked out and restrained Gina in the back of the van. Her eyebrows were raised so much she wouldn’t have been surprised if they hit the roof. “You captured one of them? Oooh…that’s…” She nodded as her throat went dry. “Good? Good. That’s good.”

Gina wasn’t moving, but she was breathing, and that was something. The pit in Amy’s stomach was becoming a chasm, and for the first time in her adult life, the fact that her first real hunt was turning into a disaster was the least important thing in her world. There was so much that was so much worse than her not having a werewolf to present to Holt.

So much worse.

“Taking down the pack is far more important than any individual wolf,” Holt explained from the front seat. “Terry suggested that it might be more…efficient if we captured one of their rank. I’m inclined to agree.” Scully was awake now but constantly drifting, leaning on Amy’s side. She grimaced, pushing him up with a quick jerk of her shoulder. “I’m sure you can see the advantage, considering that the rest of the pack escaped, yes?”

Of course Amy could. If she wasn’t panicking at the thought of Rosa’s reaction, she might have come to the same conclusion herself. “We can question her, and she’ll be an effective lure if we need to spring a, a trap.” Her voice was shakier than she would have liked, and her hands were sweaty.

She bagged her shotgun, because she didn’t trust herself not to drop it with the way her hands were shaking. It was insane- she was a crackshot, far better than any of her brothers, and certainly better than most hunters she’d encountered in her life. She was good with guns, good with weapons- but she suddenly needed her weapons as far from her as humanly possible.

Hitchcock started leaning again. This was what hell felt like.

“Wolves aren’t great for questioning, unless you’re sure they’re the weak link of the pack,” Jeffords was explaining from the driver’s seat. “Wolf packs by necessity are way too loyal for that. What they are good for is luring the rest of the pack back in.” Amy knew all of this already, she remembered clearly what she’d been taught when she was younger. Loyalty demanded that they protect their pack, but it also meant that werewolves always went back to grab their pack members.

The moment that Rosa found out where Gina was, it was going to be bad. Worse. The worst. For this ride, Amy was going to have to focus on her breathing, on not letting herself hyperventilate- a task easier said than done. Calm, even breaths and unshaking hands.

She didn’t mean to push Hitchcock off of her so roughly that he startled, waking up with a series of snorts and half snores. He blinked, turning to look at her and apologize- but something in her expression stopped him. She wondered if she looked traumatized or furious. Or maybe some mortifying combination of both. Amy turned her head away, cursing herself under her breath.

“Santiago?” Holt questioned.

Amy wasn’t sure what he’d seen either, but when she glanced up, she was positive that he was looking at her with concern, in spite of the fact that there wasn’t any discernible movement in his face. “Yes sir?”

“Are you…okay?”

She nodded, forcing a sickly smile. She could feel how malformed the expression was as the the van shook over the road. Her stomach lurched. “Oh yeah,” she nodded. “I’m fine, I’m just…” Just? Just what? In a pile of shit that she absolutely could not share because she’d just let a werewolf and three-quarters of her pack run off? Just allowing wolves to run wild after knocking Hitchcock out because…because she couldn’t imagine firing a shot at Rosa? Because her heart broke at the mere thought of it?

It was so much worse than Amy thought it would be. She was so much deeper than she’d had any intention of getting. She swallowed a lump in her throat.

“You did well, Santiago,” Holt said after a moment. His compliment made it all so much more painful. “Most hunters lose their cool during their first real encounter with a pack.”

Her sickened smile stretched further across her face because she couldn’t run from the conversation.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall out of the hunt.

The motels were obvious places, places that Rosa wasn’t about to get caught staying in. While some teams of hunters wouldn’t go after wolves in, say, a Motel 6 (too many people there, too much risk of police getting involved), Rosa couldn’t rely on this group of hunters being that considerate. She didn’t know anything about them.

Well, she knew Amy was a part of them. That was something, something that made her temples throb every time she thought about it. She didn’t want to consider what kind of hunter Amy was, exactly. She couldn’t afford to; in spite of the fact that deep in her chest, Rosa was still convinced, still positively sure that Amy had at least an ounce of honor in her compared to other hunters, she didn’t want to bet on it. Not when Gina was still missing.

The place that they ended up staying was a shitty week-to-week, a room with two beds and an air mattress. There was heat and there was basic electricity, and there was a front desk guy who spooked when Rosa stared at him for too long. For what they needed at the moment, a place to sleep in between nights spend looking for Gina, it was perfect.

The city made it hard to look for Gina; the fact that they had to assume that if they went back to the warehouse hunters would track them made it worse. Rosa had assumed, at first, that Gina stayed away because of that first text message, but after the next morning, it was clear that wasn’t the case. The werewolf hunters covered their tracks well, too; their routes through traffic had brought them through high construction areas, where the potholes smoked and made it difficult to keep up the trail. The pack could, and would, find Gina, but it was taking longer than it should have.

Even Jake had stopped cracking jokes, going scarily quiet whenever he was sitting still for any length of time. Rosa had to order him to sleep, while promising to stay up in case Gina tried to call one of them. Boyle was trying his best to keep Rosa and Jake from losing their minds, but he could only do so much- Jake deflected with anger, and Rosa refused to talk about it. She much preferred going into the back alley and working her aggressions out by beating the trash dumpster with a two by four.

Which was what she was doing the next time she saw Amy. “Don’t swing!” Amy said, her hands up. “I swear, I don’t have any-”

“Weapons? I know, idiot,” Rosa snapped, abandoning the dented and abused trash dumpster for a beat. “And I smelt you around the corner.” It was lucky for Amy that was the only new scent that Rosa had noticed- if there had been anyone else there, Rosa would have done a lot worse than swung a piece of wood at Amy’s head. “How did you find me?”

“Oh, I looked for Jake,” Amy explained with a wave of her hand. “He’s pretty easy to track, if you know what to look for.” Which, of course, Amy would. If Amy was any good at her job, she could track them all. She knew them- she knew Rosa, and there was nothing that Rosa hated more than being known.

“I’ll kill him later,” Rosa assured her.

There was an awkward silence then, as Rosa’s grip tightened around the two by four. Amy looked…good, okay, not hurt, albeit a bit tired, and that pissed Rosa off. Amy’s black leggings pissed Rosa off, her floral dress-top over it pissed Rosa off. The messy side braid was so achingly normal and cute that it infuriated Rosa. She didn’t look at all like a hunter- she looked like a stupid grad student, Rosa thought.

The two by four cracked in Rosa’s grip before the silence broke. Amy looked down at the piece of wood and gulped. Rosa caught the expression and rolled her eyes. “What do you want, Amy?” Amy’s face collapsed in shame, and she bowed her head. Rosa grimaced, looking away. One of them was going to have to say something, and Rosa suspected that if it was Amy, there would be a lot of rambling. If it was Rosa, well…Rosa wasn’t entirely sure what she would say. What could she say? Fuck off and get shot didn’t encompass what Rosa was feeling, and neither did assuring Amy that Rosa wanted to forgive her. Wanted an excuse to forgive her, if Amy gave her the slightest opportunity to.

Amy broke the silence, and it wasn’t with babbling. “I know where Gina is.” Rosa took a step forward, Amy took one back, her hands shooting back up defensively. “She’s not hurt…Holt caught her on her way back to the warehouse. Thought that she’d work well as bait.”

Rosa clenched her jaw, lifting her chin as she considered Amy’s words. “Bait only works if you can capture us. Which you can’t. Anyway, we figured she was with you, if she wasn’t dead.” If she had been dead, regardless of how Rosa felt about Amy, the hunter would have likely followed soon after. “So why are you here?” ‘Without Gina’ was implied.

“I’m-,” Amy started out fumbling, before taking a gulp of air. “I’ve been training to hunt werewolves since I was thirteen. My father hunted demons, my brothers…well, they hunt everything, just take your pick, one of them has probably tracked it down and…handled it. That’s what I wanted to do.” She stood a little straighter. “That’s why I joined up with Holt’s hunters.”

“Holt’s Hunters?” Rosa snorted. “You guys got varsity jackets?” She sounded as stupid as Peralta, for a brief second.

“It’s not what they call themselves, it’s just what we are,” Amy explained, but the look on her face made Rosa suspect that she had definitely, definitely called them Holt’s Hunters before. Amy tilted her head as if gauging the situation, before taking a slow step towards Rosa. She stood stiffly, her hands clasped behind her back. She must have practiced this speech a few times. “All I thought I wanted was to be a hunter like my brothers- no, to be a better hunter than my brothers. That’s why I’m here, in this city.”

“All you’ve said so far is why I shouldn’t trust you.”

“It’s not that simple!” Amy interjected, and Rosa blinked and her vehemence. “We’re not just running around going after any werewolf. I wouldn’t do that. Holt wouldn’t do that- he’s a good man, a good hunter.”

Rosa gestured with the cracked piece of wood in her hand towards Amy. “Then why go after my pack? Why hold Gina hostage? Doesn’t sound like a good guy to me.”

The expression on Amy’s face was odd. Upset, with her eyes doing that idiotic watering thing that always made Rosa uncomfortable when people did it. Not quite crying, but like if Rosa said the right thing she might. “Tell me the truth Rosa- have you ever killed a human?”

“Ever?” Rosa narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, once. Jake got shot in the back leg once by a sadistic little shit hunter back when we were teenagers. Had to protect him.”

“No, not self defense, although oh my god, I’m so sorry that happened to you guys,” Amy said. “I meant-”

“You meant for fun. For the thrill, or food or something sick like that,” Rosa finished. She shook her head as she tossed the two-by four to the side. “Of course not.”

“And the rest of your pack…Gina, Charles, Jake…”

“We don’t kill unless we have to. Makes it difficult to stay in one place. What, do you really think I was going around hunting humans? Just because you-”

“Holt and I are tracking a series of werewolf related deaths across the east coast.” In a better mood, Rosa might have pointed out that there were were more than just two people involved in Amy’s little werewolf hunting operation, but instead, she waited until Amy finished. “I’ve seen the aftermath, these people were absolutely killed by werewolves. And our trail ended here.” She finally stopped holding her hands behind her back, to gesture helplessly at Rosa. “With you.” She looked as if she was the one who’d been knocked out by Jake, or as if she was the one who was desperately searching for her missing pack member. “I want to believe you when you say you haven’t killed anyone, Rosa, I do, but it doesn’t make any sense that all the evidence comes back to you guys.”

Rosa’s jaw ached from clenching it, Her palms hurt from clenching them too. But she could handle this. “My pack doesn’t kill. I don’t care if you believe me or not.” It had been a long time since Rosa had told a direct lie, and it made her tongue feel thick and useless. She prodded the inside of her cheek with her tongue to try to make her mouth feel less foreign. When it didn’t work, she sighed and continued. “What will it take to convince you? What will it take to make you give Gina back to me?”

“I need an explanation for why all the evidence says that it’s you.”

“That’s easy enough. It’s the damned Vulture.”

 

A half an hour later had Amy sitting in a diner surrounded by three werewolves. Knowingly surrounded by three werewolves, which made it one of the weirder moments in her life.

“Can I ask a question, though?” Jake raised a hand jokingly, but the humor was belied by the dry sarcasm in his tone. “A couple of questions, actually. One, there is absolutely no way you were able to track me.”

“That’s not a question,” Amy pointed out.

“But it’s an incredibly important point that needed to be made, so I’m making sure that it’s out on the table,” Jake continued, completely unphased by Amy’s retort, “Two, why are we sitting here when Gina could be getting hurt right now? We should be making Amy take us back to Gina and cracking some skulls!”

“Shut up, Jake.” Rosa was sitting across from Amy, and Amy wasn’t entirely sure what the woman was thinking. She wished she knew; she wished Rosa wasn’t so damned unreadable when she wasn’t at one of the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum. Amy wished she knew what was happening in her life in general right now though; she wished that she could just be professional and…and what? Instead of tracking Jake down to find Rosa, having tracked Jake to put down the whole pack? It didn’t feel right- she’d spent plenty of time since the other night thinking about the situation, and she couldn’t convince herself that Rosa was a bad person. Wolf. Werewolf. Girlfriend.

She absolutely wouldn’t think of the word girlfriend right now, because that had obviously gone up in flames. Werewolf hunting flames. Amy attempted to hide her misery behind a glass of soda.

At least Rosa was offering up a story, even if it was one that was a little difficult to swallow. “Third,” Jake finished, “Why are we even sitting here talking about the Vulture when we should be clearing out of town if they’ve found us?”

“Because I need to know about the Vulture in order to keep Holt and the others from coming after you,” Amy explained. “And to get them to let Gina go.” And to redirect the hunters’ efforts to this supposed other pack, Amy thought but didn’t say. After all, she wasn’t so sure that things would be okay that she was going to test the ‘going to hunt other werewolves’ waters. “So Jake, I know you don’t like me right now, I know that I have no right to ask you guys for anything, but please help me understand. Please.”

Rosa glanced over at Jake. “Jake, just explain.”

Jake sighed in annoyance before stealing some of the fries that Charles had ordered. “The Vulture is the affectionate nickname we gave to this obnoxious little alpha wolf from our hometown.” Jake spoke around the food he was chewing, and Amy tried to not grimace too much at the sight of it. “Bitter that Rosa wouldn’t submit, and too much of an asshole to submit to her, he decided the thing to do was basically become the anti-us. You know, full scale evil villain type with a weasly face and a tendency to go around hunting humans. He had this whole thing about being better than humans, them being at the bottom of the food chain, you get what I’m saying. Personally, I’m pretty sure he did it just because it is precisely the thing that we wouldn’t do, but you know, Evil Villain Weasel Vultures always have some sort of ‘reason’ for what they do.”

“Are you telling me you guys have been running from a single werewolf? For years?” Amy shook her head. “No way. You guys could take a single werewolf.”

“He made his own pack,” Rosa replied simply. “Other werewolves looking to beat up on humans, a human or two that he changed instead of killed.”

“And technically,” Charles spoke up, “We’re not running from him. He’s following us.”Amy frowned. “He kills humans when he lands in a place where we’re settling down.”

“Thinks that either we’ll end up taking the fall…” Jake explained.

“…Or that I’ll cave and submit,” Rosa finished. “Which isn’t happening. He pinned- or is trying- to pin all this on us. Keep us on the run.”

“And so far,” Charles said with a frown, pulling his fries further from Jake’s grasp. “It’s worked. We don’t really want to fight him.”

“I do,” Jake and Rosa both said simultaneously. They looked at each other. Jake sighed, and continued, “But he’s not the type to fight fair. He always finds a way out of a fair challenge fight, or he’ll spring the rest of his pack on Rosa, so…”

Rosa shrugged, but somehow the shrug said ‘fuck him’ more effectively than if she’d actually put the effort into putting up her middle finger. “So we move.” There was an emphasis on the word ‘move,’ and Amy felt embarrassed just to hear it. Move, instead of run away, which was really what the pack was doing- because they clearly didn’t have much of a choice one way or another. Rosa was clearly far more mortified than Amy could possibly be when she said it, though, and so Amy didn’t comment on it.

“You can believe us or not,” Rosa said after a beat. “But that’s the deal.”

Amy took a breath, a shakier one than she was comfortable admitting. There were two options. The cynical and logical one was that they were brilliant, practiced liars. As much as Amy wanted to do what she thought Holt would do right now- be wary of liars, trust in the fact that they were werewolves, and she was a hunter, and she had a job to do-, that option fell apart when she looked at them. She couldn’t believe that Charles was capable of killing someone. She didn’t want to believe that Jake would kill just because.

And she couldn’t handle the thought of Rosa being a murderer. She needed her not to be, and frankly, Amy believed Rosa. Aside from her hopefulness, the second option- that they were being straight up with her- felt true. She didn’t know if that made her a terrible hunter or not, but it was difficult to care, in the circumstances.

“I believe you,” she said, unable to look anywhere but directly into Rosa’s eyes. Rosa raised an eyebrow, suspicious. “I do.”

Jake opened his mouth, but Rosa spoke first. “Prove it.”

Amy blinked. “Huh? I don’t know- isn’t the fact that I’m not grabbing a gun right now-”

“Get Gina.”

“I can’t,” Amy admitted. The three werewolves looked varying amounts of annoyed, pissed, and heartbroken. She held up her hands. “I mean, I can’t just go in and let her walk out the door. There are always other hunters there, Rosa, it doesn’t work like that.” She paused, toyed with the top of her glass again. “I can watch out for her- figure out a way to…fix this situation. I can at least- I can get you on the phone with her.” Amy frowned. “If you still have your phone.”

Rosa still looked suspicious. She and Jake shared a look for a beat before she replied. “I got a new one. Look,” Rosa rested her forearms on the table and leaned in. “How do I know this isn’t a part of a trap? How do I know you’re not here fucking with us?”

How indeed? How was Amy supposed to come up with a response that was good enough? It was difficult to come up with anything ‘good enough’ when she’d held a shotgun in Rosa’s face. “Because I’m going to help you get the Vulture, obviously.” She hadn’t thought before speaking, but she was certain that she’d made that decision as soon as Rosa and Jake started telling her the truth. She definitely meant to stick by her words, at any rate.

Rosa blinked, honestly surprised. “You for real?”

It was difficult not to smile at Rosa’s surprise, Amy managed to keep her smile small. “Yeah, for real. Definitely. It’s the only way to make sure…” That Rosa was safe. That Gina could go home to them. That Amy had put her trust in the right people. It was the only real choice she had left.

And the smile that broke across Rosa’s face was more than enough to tell Amy she’d made the right decision.

 

It was pretty obvious to Amy how to approach keeping an eye on Gina. Everyone had their rounds playing babysitter, and it was a matter of figuring out who was most likely to actually leave her alone for the entirety of her time on shift. As bumbling as Scully and Hitchcock could be, Amy knew that relying on them to behave in a specific way was a bad idea. While they might clear out immediately, they could also decide they wanted to talk to her about foot fungus or opera, or they might keep poking their heads back in to ask a hundred useless questions. So as easy as it would to pull one over on either of them, it was a crap shoot.

She absolutely wasn’t going to try to actually talk to Gina right before or after Holt’s shift. If Holt asked her anything, even ‘how are you today,’ Amy wasn’t positive that she could straight out lie to him right now. The amount of stress and embarrassment wasn’t worth the risk- she already flailed while talking to him under the best of circumstances. Which left Amy arranging it so that she was before Hitchcock’s babysitting duty, and after Terry’s.

Amy forced a wide, beaming smile and held up the snack food in her hands. “I brought yogurt!” Terry jumped up from his seat quickly, practically running to Amy’s side. She handed him a yogurt cup and a spoon, blinking in surprise. “I, uh, knew you liked yogurt, but I didn’t realize it was that serious…”

Terry frowned, confused. “What? No, it’s not the yogurt, although Terry does love yogurt.” Amy pasted her smile back on her face, although this was the particular smile saved for the awkwardness of Terry referring to himself in third person. “It’s her.”

“G- her?” Although Gina’d had no problem introducing herself to the hunters when she was first captured, Amy was trying her best to hide their familarity. More often than not, it meant that Amy was tripping over saying Gina’s name. “Is she causing a problem?” The tension in Amy’s body was worry, although it could have been- was hopefully misread as- preparing for an altercation.

“She’s driving me nuts!” Terry exclaimed, already eating. “Keeps asking me about what I think about soap operas-”

“I thought we were having a very important discussion about evil twins and car accidents,” Gina piped up. She was in a large cage, about the size of a small bathroom, sitting in the corner. Somehow she didn’t look as if she’d been in there very long. Or that she was remotely alarmed. Amy couldn’t say she was surprised. “My bad.”

“-or about whether Holt is dating someone-”

“-Not for me. I’m not his type, but you never know, maybe he likes them big. Strappy, beefy, muscular, shirt buttons slightly-”

“She won’t shut up.” Terry looked at Amy as if somehow by begging her for mercy, Gina would stop. Amy knew from prior experience that nothing on this earth would get Gina to be quiet. “I haven’t had a moment of peace since I got on shift. Even Holt looked like he was gonna lose it-” Terry paused. “I think that was what it was. Or he’d dissociated from the whole thing so much he was in his happy place. I can’t take much more of her.”

Amy wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sympathize, or a little bit of both. “Well,” she said, gently leading Terry towards the door. “You don’t have to for at least a few more hours. I’ll take it from here.”

“You don’t understand-”

“I’ve got headphones, if it’s really serious,” Amy reassured him. “You go, get some rest, call your wife.” It only took a few more seconds of prodding before Terry left, and Amy closed the door behind him. She leaned against the door for a moment, exhaling loudly.

Gina didn’t seemed fazed by any of the situation. She leaned forward just enough to throw Amy a dry look. “How do you guys actually hunt anything?”

Amy scrunched up her face, offended. “Excuse me?”

Gina went down the list, raising a finger with every point. “You’ve got sexy man meat over there who jumps at big noises, Hitchly and Scul-cock-”

“Hitchcock and Scully,” Amy corrected.

“Um, do they know that? I don’t think they actually know that they are, in fact, two different people.” She continued as if uninterrupted, “And I also don’t think your illustrious captain knows how to spell smile, let alone how to smile.”

“What does that have to do with hunting werewolves?” Amy queried, moving away from the door and towards the chair that Terry had been sitting in. She placed a hand on the top of it. “He’s serious about his work. His personal life.” Amy tilted her head. “Everything. I think that’s a good thing.” She stood straighter. “It’s an inspiration to me.”

“Of course it is, Studious Sally, but let’s be real for a minute,” Gina drawled. “That serious is super creepy.”

“It is not!” Amy countered, even as a part of a brain told her it was ridiculous to be having this conversation with a caged werewolf, instead of getting straight to the point of things. “It’s dedication.” Gina’s stare was better than her responding directly, Amy supposed. Amy cleared her throat. “Are you…okay?”

“Me? Oh, I’m great. The cage thing? Definitely not lame, definitely not upsetting.” There was a swift flicker of emotion. It was easy to lose track of reality with Gina, sometimes. Everything was a sarcastic joke or an insult- it was such an automatic thing to either laugh or be offended with the woman. It was only in short bursts, flashes, that Gina even reminded Amy that there was something else there.

Amy chewed on her lip and felt horribly ashamed of herself for forgetting, even for a second. “Look I…I’m sorry.”

“Well, if you’re sorry, I guess we’re besties again,” Gina retorted.

This was going just as well as Amy deserved, but Amy’s grip on the chair tightened all the same. “Rosa sends her love.” Gina’s head shot up for the first time in the conversation, her eyes flashing a golden-yellow before she locked down her expression again. Then she pseudo-bored again, checked out. “Okay, so she didn’t say it like that, but I promised her I’d help you guys.”

Gina gestured towards Amy’s free hand. “And yet no keys to let me go.”

“I don’t have access to the keys, but…” Sighing, Amy proceeded to explain the conversation that she’d had with Rosa and the others. She told Gina that she knew about the Vulture, about their running. She told Gina that she promised Rosa to help clear their name, and to make sure nothing happened to Gina during all of this.

Gina might have said that Holt’s seriousness was super creepy, but at the moment that paled in comparison to Gina’s unaffected facial expression during the whole spiel. Amy wasn’t sure what Gina was thinking- whether she was more scared or upset or angry. Whether she even believed anything that Amy was saying.

“Stop looking so hopeful, it’s gross,” Gina said, when Amy was finished. “If you did talk to Rosa you have to be telling the truth because she would have left you unconscious in the back of a creepy subway car somewhere if you weren’t.” Well, at least they were both certain of that much. “So tell me, Amy: on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being vaguely concerned about eating a spoonful of someone else’s ice cream, and 10 being you being a party to the kidnapping of your girlfriend’s family, how guilty did you feel?”

“Uh…10?” Amy frowned. “Obviously? If you don’t want me to talk to you, okay, I deserve that-”

“You do, and I kind of don’t want you to, but the only snack for me right now is the taste of your regret and the disaster that is your love life, so…if you’re really here to help me, you’ll just have to suck it up and deal.” Gina stood up and strolled the couple of feet from her seat to the front of the cage, leaning on it with her forearms so she could rest her forehead on them. She might have been posturing to cover up her actual feelings about the situation, but it didn’t matter; Amy felt whatever tiny sliver of control she had in the conversation evaporate.

Amy licked her lips. “Okay. I’ll suck it up and deal then. I’m a big girl, I can handle some words.”

Gina smirked. “You better, girlfriend, because we both know you’re not doing this for me.” Amy opened her mouth to argue, but Gina cut her off. “You’re doing this for Rosa.” Amy’s mouth clamped shut so quickly, she couldn’t help but imagine the sound of a giant gate slamming closing. “It’s okay. I’d say I won’t tell her but,” her voice lowered to a stage whisper, “everybody kind of already knows.”

“I’m helping because it’s right.”

“You’re helping because you need to prove your honey-bunny innocent so you guys can keep doing the nasty. And that’s cool, I respect that. Kind of.”

“She’d kill you for calling her honey-bunny,” she replied, managing the saddest smile she’d donned since the whole fiasco began. Amy’s cheeks burned, and she looked down at her feet. “I know how badly this all went down, Gina. I know that there’s no me and Rosa. There can’t be.”

“Why not? That starcrossed lovers thing is huge. Destined for misery, the world basically saying they’ll die. Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Katniss and Peeta, Jet Li and Aaliyah in Romeo Must Die, Regis and Philbin.”

“That’s his last name.”

“It’s a tragic love story,” Gina didn’t drop a beat. “Point is, I think you’re giving Rosa either too much or too little credit. Yeah, she’s big bad alpha girl, ready to kill and be killed to protect us, but she’s not actually the heartless ice queen she pretends to be. Mostly she does that to hide the fact that the true Elsa of the group is me, okay?”

“Right.” In spite of Gina’s flippancy, Amy was trying her hardest to blink away the stinging in her eyes. She sniffled. A little bit. “Sure.” But she couldn’t help her eyes growing a little larger. “You really think…?”

“I know Rosa better than nearly anyone, except for Jake. I haven’t seen her since you guys invaded our place, but I know she’s still totally into you,” Gina shook her head. “It’s near impossible for her to let someone in, but once you’re in, it’s basically a lifetime membership. If you’re for real, she still ‘loves’ you.”

Amy sniffled again. A little more. “While the quotation marks are a little weird…thanks, Gina.” She exhaled, and finally released her grip on the chair. She sat down, and the weight off her shoulders made her head spin.

“Any time. It’s not like I’m doing anything else in here.”

If it wasn’t so inappropriate, Amy would have laughed.

 

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy and Rosa meet up while Amy tries to make amends

As Rosa pushed Jake out the door, he made sure to let her know he thought that this was a terrible idea. She lied and told him it wasn’t, and then told him the truth and said if he didn’t leave, she’d shove a wire hanger so far up his ass it would come out his ear. Like every other time she’d taken the time to creatively threaten him, it worked, and soon, she was left alone in the room to wait.

She paced for what felt like decades. When someone finally knocked on the door and she looked at the clock on the nightstand, only fifteen minutes had passed. It was so absurd, Rosa jerked the door open expecting to see Jake again, Charles in tow, claiming that they’d forgotten something.

It wasn’t Jake or Charles. Amy was carrying take out. In spite of the fact that her outfit made Rosa think of a higher class Forever 21 ad, Rosa couldn’t help but look her up and down approvingly. Her hair loose around her shoulders, Amy wore fitted jeans, a navy tank top, and a floral and navy blazer. Rosa looked down at herself- black jeans, gray v-neck t-shirt and combat boots. Rosa wasn’t worried that she didn’t look good, but she couldn’t help but marvel that she still stopped and thought about how Amy looked at all.

It was a problem. A big one.

“You’re early.”

“I’m usually early,” Amy countered. “It’s better than being late.”

“You could be on time.”

“Did I do this wrong?” Amy asked, and while it was clear she thought she was frowning, she started to pout.

Rosa cursed internally. “Depends. What food did you bring?”

Amy held up the very large bag of food. “Chinese. And a couple of cans of beer. Your favorite.” She was practically hiding her face behind the bags, as if she thought that Rosa was going to react badly. At least Amy wasn’t fully aware how soft Rosa was going for her. Rosa took advantage of that fact, crossing her arms and standing firm, as if she might not let Amy all the way in. Amy lowered the bag a little. “Unless you don’t want.”

Rosa looked to the side. “Pork lo mein?”

“I thought you liked beef?”

Rosa smiled at Amy’s wide, panicked eyes, at how dramatically her mouth dropped open. Reluctantly, she moved out of the way of the door, gesturing with her head. “I do. You didn’t fuck up. This time.” The threat fell flat to Rosa’s ears, but she ignored it, watching Amy walk into the room.

Amy glanced around the room that the three werewolves were sharing. She was judging the space, or pitying them for it- Rosa didn’t know which one but it made the already present tension in her shoulders that much more uncomfortable. Amy turned back to face her. “I um, don’t know how you do it. I had to share a room with two of my brothers until I was was twelve. It was awful.”

“It’s not like we have a choice,” Rosa replied, secretly surprised at that bit of information being shared. She was bad at guessing what other people were thinking though, so she shouldn’t have been surprised. They were always a few thoughts dumber or more complicated than she gave them credit for. Even some of the ones she thought she knew well. “We’ve shared rooms on and off for years. Warehouse was actually a nicer situation than usual. We got cable.”

“Cable’s good…space to walk around’s better,” Amy granted. Rosa gestured to one of the beds, and Amy sat down, finally putting the bag of food on the nightstand. “I used to trip over my brothers everywhere, all their crap, all their toys…their extensive collection of swords…” Her expression said she knew how absurd that sounded to anyone that wasn’t her.

“That’s why you keep them in a box under the bed,” Rosa offered. Maybe it didn’t sound so absurd to Rosa. Amy raised an eyebrow, and Rosa moved to stand next to the nightstand, kicking something under the bed. It was a solid trunk, and made a heavy noise when kicked. “It’s got a lock on it so good that even I can’t snap it. Cost a bunch of money to get it enchanted. Jake whined for weeks when he couldn’t open it. It was awesome.”

Amy chuckled, watching as Rosa started pulling the cardboard and styrofoam food containers out of the bag. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pack of wolves that traveled with an extensive weapon collection…did you have to sneak back to get it?”

Rosa passed her a container of scallion pancakes, which Amy accepted. “Had it in a storage unit. I still have stuff at the warehouse I want to get back, but figured my back up trunk was good enough.” The beers were the last thing out the bag, and Rosa popped one open before sitting across from Amy. She wasn’t hungry- or her stomach was too twisted in knots to eat much. She wasn’t sure which. “I like weapons. Swords, knives, guns…” She shrugged. “What, you don’t like your guns?”

Amy opened her mouth to respond and then tightly pressed her lips together. “I don’t…” She gestured hopelessly. “Not like that, really? I mean, yeah, they’re family heirlooms, but they’re…what I use to do my job. Not that I’ve really gotten to use them much at all, I mean, I don’t-”

Rosa ignored the stammering. “Huh. Weird.”

“Weird? How exactly is it weird that I don’t just collect weapons?”

Rosa’s eyebrows were knit with bafflement. “What kind of person doesn’t want to collect weapons? Especially if you need them for work.” She drank some of her beer. “I miss my ninja stars.”

“What?”

“My ninja stars. I usually keep them under my pillow, but I didn’t have time to grab them.” She frowned, picturing precisely where they were, unless Amy and her crew had gone and searched the place. “Blows, not having them around. I have the knives, but those are for throwing at a dart board.”

Rosa wasn’t a fidgeter, but Amy was. She was listening to Rosa talk, picking at one of the corners of the take out box she was holding. Amy tried chuckling. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a hunter who has nearly as many weapons as you seem to.” Rosa glanced at her; the truth was, Rosa wasn’t entirely sure they were ‘okay’ enough for Amy to make jokes talking about other hunters. Rosa wasn’t even sure if they were okay.

She’d never _wanted_ to be okay with someone that she shouldn’t be before. Rosa settled on pressing her lips together in a way that kept her from grimacing, before reaching over to just open the take out box that was in Amy’s hands. The action startled Amy, and they both paused, Rosa leaning in with her hands still on the take out box. Amy stared upwards at her, blinking, mouth pursed mid-thought.

As usual with Amy, the thought eventually rolled out, but it rolled like a square wheel down a rocky hill. “I’m sorry.”

Rosa pulled back. “Don’t apologize.” Amy looked confused. “You should feel bad. You should feel like shit, you almost got my pack killed. Sorry can’t cut it, though, so don’t apologize.”

“You’re right,” Amy said, looking down. “ _Stupid_.” She hissed the word more to herself than to Rosa. “I tried to talk to Gina…” The panic that Rosa felt in her gut was clear in her eyes, if Amy’s rush to explain was any indication. “I was _trying_ to see if she was okay, if there was anything that she needed to tell you guys.” Aside from, Rosa assumed, her location and the easiest entrances and exits. “But talking to Gina is kind of…” Amy frowned deeply, and Rosa’s heart- which had decided to betray her, apparently- skipped a beat at the expression. “…she’s mad, I think? But I don’t know if…I couldn’t tell if she was upset or just watching us like a boring basic cable repeat.”

“Gina hates being bored,” Rosa offered. “Makes her start hissing at things.” Amy made a face; she’d experienced it at least once or twice. Rosa snorted at how obvious everything that Amy thought went across her face. Which was, of course, the part that frustrated Rosa the most. How was Amy such an open book and Rosa never _knew_ she was a hunter. Never caught on.

Rosa sighed heavily and grabbed herself a beer. “Your brothers.” The words came out like a barked order, and Amy looked baffled. The explanation of Rosa’s statement was easy. It was a pathetic olive branch, a way to talk about something that would keep Amy from babbling and apologizing, that might wipe some of that misery off of Amy’s face. Rosa wanted to actually _know_ something about Amy, too, to hear something honest without Amy avoiding the fact that they were what they were. If she was honest now, Rosa had a feeling that…that things wouldn’t be as horrible as they seemed.

Instead, though, Rosa’s verbal explanation was shorter. “Talk about them. You like that shit.”

“That shit?”

“You know, talking.”

 

“I’ve known Jake since we were kids,” Rosa was saying in between bites of lo mein. “He’s always been an idiot.”

They’d both ended up on Rosa’s bed. Rosa was sitting up with her back against the wall, looking down at Amy. Amy had ended up laying on her back when she finished eating, and Rosa couldn’t decide if the other woman was too close or not close enough. Every so often, Amy would start rolling over to her side, curling in towards Rosa, before realizing what she was doing and readjusting herself.

Rosa found herself almost pulling Amy in closer, at one point. It was kind of gross.

“I think he’s just…loud. Maybe weird.” Amy’s ability to modulate her volume was apparently coming and going in waves. It wasn’t the first time Rosa had seen Amy buzzed, but it felt like it had been a decade ago. Amy kept screwing up her face as if every few words had a very elaborate thought process attached to them. “He’s not as funny as he thinks he is, you know.”

“I know.”

“Does he know?”

“I tell him a lot.”

Amy snorted at that, seemingly satisfied by Rosa’s answer. She rolled to her side again, resting her head on her hand as she looked back up at Rosa. “And Charles and Gina? Did they grow up with you too?”

Rosa shook her head know. “Gina was on her own and ended up getting along with Jake, so she stayed with us. Found Charles working at a bakery, trying to be the next Gordon Ramsey or something.” Except with less yelling. And less of a spine. But still kind of a food nerd. “He got attacked by the Vulture, but idiot didn’t realize he left Charles alive, so we took him in.”

They were silent for a moment while Rosa remembered them helping Charles. They’d met Charles days before he’d been attacked- he and Jake got into an argument about the name of some pastry, with Jake mostly arguing because Charles’ passionate retort was some combination of funny and fascinating to him. Jake went to grab a bite from that bakery every day for a week, which was probably how the Vulture got the idea in the first place.

They hid out in that town for another week while Charles healed up, and it was all Rosa could do to keep Jake from going to attempt to attack the Vulture all on his own.

Rosa’s recollections were interrupted by, of all things, Amy’s finger suddenly on Rosa’s nose. Rosa blinked. “Did you just…” The rest of her pack had told her the word for this before, but it was stupid to say. “…boop my nose?”

Amy was absurdly, tipsily serious as she nodded. She tapped Rosa’s nose again. “You’re a very good person. Such a good person.” Rosa recoiled a bit from the statement moreso than the physical contact, but Amy continued. “No, no, you are! You take care of your family, that’s…that’s super important. They love you…and saving Charles, you didn’t have to but you did and that’s…” She was getting oddly overwhelmed by this strange interpretation of Rosa she’d decided on. “That’s such a _good_ person thing.”

“I’m not a good person. I just don’t like leaving someone to bleed to death. Not if I didn’t make them bleed to death.”

“Yes you _are_ ,” Amy insisted, sitting up a little too quickly and somehow managing to hit her head on Rosa’s chin. Rosa cursed as Amy let out a small whine. Rubbing the top of her head she continued. “Just because you’re violent and grumpy doesn’t mean you’re not good, because you keep _doing_ good things…That’s why I’m here, because I know you’re telling me the truth and-”

Rosa meant to say ‘you’re drunk, shut up’ or ‘Stop saying I’m good it’s creepy and dorky,’ but neither of those sentences came out. Instead, she put her hands on either side of Amy’s face- the face of too tipsy, too serious, too loud, too much trouble Amy- and pulled her up into a kiss. The kiss was too hard, so it quickly became too fumbling, as Amy tried to both find her balance and find a way to comfortably hold on to Amy.

The lo mein container that Rosa was eating got knocked to the floor as the kiss grew in intensity, as Rosa pulled Amy in closer, as Amy held onto Rosa’s t-shirt like a life line.Which was good, because at some point, Amy climbed into Rosa’s lap, linking her hands behind Rosa’s neck as Rosa sat up further.

The kiss was better than anything Rosa could have said, because words would have been stupid. It would have been Rosa stumbling her way into awkwardly emotional territory, the kind of thing that Rosa had never been good at. She didn’t want Amy to shut up, she just wanted to be over _this_ part of the conversation. She believed Amy when the woman said she wanted to help, that she would- if any one could fix things out of sheer grade-school style determination, it was Amy Santiago.

Amy’s warm body and murmured apologies between breaths, between kisses, while Rosa removed Amy’s blazer, when Rosa’s hands pushed up under Amy’s tank top and nearly tore it off in their rush.

Rosa’s quickened breath while Amy’s fingers came up into Rosa’s hair, when they finally moved lower and started to work on Rosa’s bra.

Rosa was tired of apologizing and rejecting and accepting them. She missed _this_ , she missed contact, she missed her people, she missed starting to think of Amy as hers.

And that night, for a few hours, Amy was.

 


End file.
